Location: DAVIDSON, Tennessee

On October 2, 1881, Mrs. Harding, the wife of a upstanding black man, was initially denied access to the ladies car on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. She ordered the assistance of General Manager Thomas, who promptly ordered that a separate car be arranged for her. Harding refused to enter the separate car and filed a law suit against the company. Later that afternoon, a black organist,...

Liquor, as Edward Ayers explains, took a heavy toll on the South, especially since alcohol became much easier to get as the numbers of towns and stores increased. Often, churches went on the offensive, trying to reform what they saw as the greatest threats to their moral standards.' In the New South, women had an increasingly important role on church committees, and thousands of younger women...

One of the leading pioneers of the modern Civil Rights movement, W.E.B. DuBois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868. DuBois grew up in an environment of intellectuals. Thus, he witnessed few direct displays of Jim Crowism. A talented student, DuBois excelled academically in high school. Upon graduation, he hoped to attend Harvard or Yale. Due to lack of funds, however, he traveled...

Marsh J Polk, the treasurer of the state of Tennessee and the nephew of President Polk, raised suspicion when he refused to pay interest on bonds enacted by the state. Tennessee needed the revenue from the bonds to repay the forty million dollar deficit created by Civil War devastation. A committee from the general assembly investigating Polk's personal accounts discovered that he transferred...